Greek mythology has several female triads, four of which, according to Hesiod, are immortal: the terrible Fates, the avenging Erinyes, the sweet Seasons and the charming Graces.

1. Greek mythology has several female triads, four of which, according to Hesiod, are immortal:
the terrible Fates, the avenging Erinyes, the sweet Seasons and the charming Graces.

2. The immortal female triads
in paintings

4. Name: The Moirae, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos (Aisa)
Nickname: The Fates, the Parcae, the Fata, The Controllers
Current city: Olympus
General Duties: Deciding everything that will happen to everyone who is born, including the moment and way in which they will they die.
Division of Labor:
Clotho, spins the first thread of life, causing birth;
Lachesis, measures the length of the thread of life;
Atropos (Aisa), cuts the thread of life, bringing death
The Moirae, often called the Fates in English, are the goddesses who decide the fate of all living things.
Some say that not even Zeus can escape the webs these ladies spin.
In paintings, the Fates almost always appear as the three sisters, and hardly ever (possibly even never) singly.
Where the artist has elected to give them individual appearances, it is Atropos who is normally shown as an older woman,
with the gravity of her task.

5. Father Time and his scythe making the association with death ...
Clotho and Lachesis are working together,
and …
Atropos, with her shears, looks directly at the spectator, knowing his fate.
Pieter Thijs
Le Temps et les Parques
Time and the Three Fates
1665
Museum of Art and History, Geneva

9. The story of the fall of Troy
and an apple inscribed 'For the Fairest’ …
Every head has turned towards Eris- Discord as she
brings her golden apple …
(apart from that of the centaur)
even the three Fates, have for once paused momentarily
in their work …
Edward Burne-Jones
The Feast of Peleus
La fête de Pélée
1872-1881
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham

13. Atropos, the inexorable goddess of death carries
a few scissors to cut the thread of life;
Clotho, Goya her distaff replaces with a doll,
possibly an allegory of life;
Lachesis looks across a lens and symbolizes time,
since she was the one who measured the length of the fiber.
and
a male figure, hands tied behind him as if he were captive.
The Fates would be deciding the destiny of the man whose
bound hands cannot be opposed to his fate.
Francisco Goya
Atropos, or the Fates
Átropos, ou Les Moires
1819-23
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

16. a bearded figure, the personification of the Time,
a black female figure having four breasts, that symbolized life,
Clotho with a red thread, the symbol of love,
Lachesis with a white thread, which emphasizes the purity of life,
Atropos, holding a pair of scissors, capable of breaking the thread of life
and
to strengthen the concept, a skeleton watches the scene.
The three Parcae as three young and beautiful girls. A way to underline
the perfection of the human body and, consequently, the perfection of Nature.
Il Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi) or Marco Bigio
The Three Parcae
Les trois Parques
1525, 1540-1550
Villa Barberini, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome

19. Accompanying a sorceress ...
flowers, snakes, and other supplies of a sorceress,
Medea in the midst of an incantation to force Jason’s return to her
and
the Fates
and
a flash-forward: Medea fleeing Corinth in a chariot drawn by dragons,
the bodies of her children thrown down after their deaths
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Vision of Medea
Vision de Médée
1828
The Tate Gallery, London

22. Name: The Erinyes: Alecto, Tisiphone, Magaera
Nickname: The Furies, The Infernal Goddesses
Current city: Tartarus
Occupation: Goddesses of Vengeance
Means of transport: Their wings
Weapon of Choice: Dementia
Friends: Nemesis, Hades
Enemies: Apollo, Orestes, All Evildoers
They became associated with the punishment of moral crimes such as anger, those who broke their oaths, and murderers,
respectively.
Furious, snaky-haired, bloody-eyed ladies flap their wings and rise up from the black pit of Tartarus to put the smack down.
Their favorite methods of punishment include driving people insane, blighting big stretches of countryside, and blasting
whole cities with plague.

23. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Athamas and Ino.
Juno seeks vengeance ...
a nocturnal fantasy landscape lit by fires,
peacocks,
the monsters and the tormented,
the frightening, partly animal-like spooky figures
Juno, the wife of Jupiter
and
the three goddesses of vengeance
(Juno engages Tisiphone, one of the three Furies, to bring Athamas
down by driving him mad. Tisiphone hurls two snakes from her hair
at Athamas and Ino, and pours a poisonous concoction on them both.)
Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jan Brueghel l'Ancien
Juno in the Underworld
Junon aux Enfers
1596-1598
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden

27. Three groaning and screaming Gorgonic Furies carry the murdered corpse
of Clytemnestra, with Orestes' dagger still buried deep in her chest ...
Orestes holding his hands over his ears with an expression of pain on his face,
his mother, a knife buried
and
with hair swarming with snakes, the Furies:
Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera point at his crime
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Oreste poursuivi par les Furies ou Les Remords d'Oreste
Orestes Pursued by the Furies or The Remorse of Orestes
1862
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk

31. Orestes, whom the god Apollo ordered to avenge the death of his father ...
the murdered body of Clytemnestra, on the floor
and
the Furies who rush, arms outstretched, towards Orestes
(and a profusion of arms reaching out, grasping, tugging ...)
Philippe-Auguste Hennequin
Les Remords d'Oreste
The Remorse of Orestes
1800
Musée du Louvre, Paris

35. Orestes trying to escape from three snake-wielding Furies,
who swirl around him with menace.
They are avenging Orestes’ murder of his own mother, Clytemnestra,
and her lover Aegisthus.
Franz von Stuck
Orestes and the Erinyes
Oreste et les Erinyes
1905
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome

38. Orestes under the attacks of the Furies, as he tries to run from them,
the swarm of fearsome Furies, daemonic mask-like faces, hold out burning
brands and fistfuls of small snakes
and
a woman who stands in Orestes’ way, a gilded crown, and a clean incision
of a stab wound above her left breast ... his mother, Clytemnestra.
John Singer Sargent
Orestes Pursued by the Furies
Oreste poursuivi par les Furies
1922-1925
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston

41. Name: The Horae, Horai, Seasons or Hours
Nickname: Doorkeepers on Olympus
Occupation: Diké, goddess of moral justice; Eunomia, goddess of law and legislation; Eirene, the personification of peace and wealth
Friends: Aphrodite, Charites
The artists gave the Hours the physiognomy of graceful girls, often dancers dressed in long clothes, holding flowery branches in
their hands.
Their numbers range from three to over a dozen, and in paintings they’re usually identified by a process of elimination.
If there’s one or more dancing young women, who aren’t Graces or Muses, then they could well be the Horai.

42. One of the Horai is believed to appear in Botticelli’s Birth of Venus ...
Zephyros , the west wind, harbinger of Spring,
and Aura the personification of lighter breezes,
Aphrodite is received by one of the Hours which represents
the season of spring.
It could therefore be Thallo or Thalatte (Latin Flora), who is featured
in Botticelli’s Primavera.
Sandro Botticelli
The Birth of Venus
La Naissance de Vénus
1486
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

46. The Horai accompany Phaëthon in his father’s sun chariot ...
some are shown with butterfly wings, as they’re thrown into turmoil,
causing time to fall out of joint
Peter Paul Rubens
The Fall of Phaeton
La Chute de Phaéton
1604-1608
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

50. Name: The Charites, Graces
Current city: Olympus
Occupation: Goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, goodwill, and fertility
Friends: Aphrodite, the Muses, Apollo
In visual art they typically appear dancing together, in the company of Aphrodite, sometimes they are simply an excuse to add
three nude females.
Protagonists of countless works, from antiquity to the present day,
have served to represent not only the mythological characters but also the ideal of female beauty of each period and for each artist.

51. Represent the feminine virtues Pleasure, Chastity and Beauty ...
Their clothing is like lace, very light, and see-through, which demonstrates
Botticelli’s virtuosity
The Three Graces together with Venus form a feminine, but also a human ideal.
Sandro Botticelli
Primavera, Spring
Le Printemps
1482
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

55. Adonis's death in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Venus discovers
the body of her young, handsome lover.
pathos and passion …
the three weeping Graces and the sobbing Cupid who,
with the grieving Venus, replicate a Pietà scene.
(... only the dogs remain unruffled)
Peter Paul Rubens
The Death of Adonis (with Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces)
La Mort d'Adonis (Adonis pleuré par Vénus, Cupidon et les Trois Grâces)
1614
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

58. the three Graces completely naked,
but
without symbolic attributes, such as the apple or the flowers,
but
they have hat and necklaces
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Lucas Cranach l'Ancien
Les Trois Grâces
The Three Graces
1531
Musée du Louvre, Paris

61. Originally, only one of the three women was holding
a golden ball in her hand. This would be a depiction
of the Judgement of Paris and the three Greek goddesses:
Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.
Subsequently, Raphael changed his mind and put an apple
in each woman’s hand, making them Hesperidia,
who conferred immortality to humans by giving them apples.
According to other more contemporary art historians,
the figures as handmaidens of Venus, holding
the golden apples presenting the golden apples as symbols
of the hero's virtue
Raphael, Raphaël
Les trois Grâces
Three Graces
1504-1505
Musée Condé, Château de Chantilly, Chantilly

64. a fountain,
a flower garland
a horn of abundance,
Cupid
and
the three naked goddesses, mature and opulent
Peter Paul Rubens
The three Graces
Les Trois Grâces
1639
Museo del Prado, Madrid

67. A temple floating in the clouds ...
Venus disarms Mars, the god of war,
Cupid forgot about the arrows,
Mars, is succumbing to the charms of Venus, but the outcome
is still in doubt
and
the Three Graces who perform aimless tasks:
one offers a cup of wine to Mars who has no free hand to take it,
another rolls his shield as if it were a child's hoop
and
we can only wonder where the Grace on the left thinks she is putting
Mars' helmet.
(Traditionally, the Graces were the beautifuI handmaidens of Venus,
but these are patently 'graceless Graces' and their gestures and
expressions border on the absurd and comical.)
Jacques-Louis David
Mars désarmé par Vénus
Mars disarmed by Venus
1824
Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelles

71. The juxtaposition of modern Paris and the Graces ...
the mythical Three Graces adapted from a Roman fresco from Pompeii,
extend their arms through antiquity and present to us the Parisian
cityscape dominated by the modern landmark of the Eiffel Tower
“Ancient grace reappears: Pompeii! But drowned in a desire for new
composition” (Delaunay, op.cit., ed. Francastel, 1957, p. 62).
Robert Delaunay
La Ville de Paris
The City of Paris, The Three Graces
1910-1912
Musée national d'art moderne, Centre national d'art et de culture
Georges-Pompidou, Paris

74. o.esqsegues@gmail.com
The immortal female triads in paintings
Triades féminines immortelles dans la peinture
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Music Vangelis Alpha
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